Ben Shapiro Interviews Israeli Arab CEO Who Says Many Israeli Arabs Support Israel Against Hamas

On his podcast Friday, Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro interviewed an Arab-Israeli commentator from Nazareth, Israel who disputed the image of the Arab community of Israel as being monolithic in its opposition to the Jewish state.

Shapiro spoke with Yoseph Haddad, the CEO of Together Vouch for Each Other, which notes on its website that it was “founded in 2018 by a group of young Israeli Arabs – Christians, Muslims, Bedouin and Druze, who felt determined to bring about change in the Arab sector of Israeli society, bringing the Arab community closer to Israeli society.”

“I want to use this opportunity to maybe speak about something that we don’t hear usually in the media, especially in the Western media,” Haddad began. “It’s the partnership between Jews and Arabs regarding the fight in Gaza and the situation here in Israel. Because as we speak right now, you have Christian, Muslim, Druze, and Jewish soldiers fighting in Gaza and fighting for our freedom. And at the same time, you have also the Arab-Israelis here contributing and donating a lot to the South and to the IDF.”

“This is something people are not even talking about,” Haddad continued. “The war is not between the Arabs against Jews or Jews against Arabs. It’s not even a war between Israelis against Palestinians. It’s literally between the IDF — which in my point of view, and it should be … a point of view of anybody else — is the good side against the barbaric side of a terrorist organization that killed and massacred Jews and Arabs.”

“One of the great lies that’s been promulgated in the Western press is that Arabs, Muslims everywhere are enraged with Israel for defending itself against Hamas,” Shapiro pointed out. “There’s a poll that came out recently in November from the Israel Democracy Institute, and it found that while 48% of Arab citizens said that they felt like they were a part of Israel in June, after the October 7th attack, that number spiked to 70% of Arab citizens who said that they felt like they were part of the country. Even if offered the possibility of other Western citizenship, 59% of Arab respondents said they would stay in Israel. So this idea that Israel is somehow an apartheid state — which is one of the contentions now being made, ironically enough, by South Africa — and that Israel is all about repression of its Arab citizens or that it’s committing a genocide is given the lie by the fact that Arabs are Israeli citizens, Arab Muslims are Israeli citizens.”

“Ben, I’m smiling because you said it went from 40 to 70%,” Haddad replied. “But actually, if you want the truth, if we go on the ground, I can tell you that the number is higher, higher than that. And sometimes if you take the camera off and you speak face to face with someone who just said, ‘Oh, I don’t I don’t want to be in Israel,’ you would see him saying, ‘Israel is where I want to be. This is the only democracy in the Middle East.’”

“I was a commander over Jewish soldiers in the IDF. The fact is that we are 20% of the population here, yet we are 30% of the doctors in Israel and 50% of the pharmacists in Israel.  The examples — I can go on and on and on,” he declared.

“So we understand one thing,” Haddad asserted. “Those who claim that Israel is an apartheid state, it’s because there is only one motive in their head. And it is not to end the conflict. … As an Arab, it was very important for me to stand out and to speak because we are suffering. We are suffering. It’s the Israeli Arabs, it’s the Jewish Israelis, it’s also the Palestinians at the West Bank and in Gaza. They are all suffering because idiots out there in America or in Europe talking about a problem that does not exist.”

“I need people to understand in America, in the West, that this war is not between Jews and Arabs. And I would keep fighting for that to make sure that people understand that. I mean, it really is amazing that the people suggest that it is, given the fact that the best-situated Arabs in the Middle East by far live in Israel,” Haddad said.

“If you just look at the Arab Israeli household income, average net income for four Arab Israeli households as of 2021 was about $3300 bucks, roughly $38,000 a year,” Haddad explained. “The GDP per capita in the Palestinian Authority annually is $3600. So in other words, in [an] Arab-Israeli family, living in Israel is going to earn in a month what it may take a year to earn if you are living under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority or under Hamas.”

“The Israeli government is significantly better for Arabs than the Arab governance has been literally in any part of the Middle East,” he said simply.

Shapiro asked, “What kind of what kind of feedback and blowback have you gotten for saying these things?”

“I get some really positive feedback and of course, other threats, and hate messages,” Haddad answered. “But I want to tell you one thing: The people who are trying to intimidate me into silence; there’s a reason why they’re trying to do that. It’s because I’m exposing their lies and I’m showing the facts and the reality from the point of view of an Arab who lives in Israel.”